Pharmaceutical firm lives up to its standards so employees will, too

Cadence Pharmaceuticals

Providing a desirable place to work can be good for business, if done in the right way, says Ted Schroeder, chief executive of Cadence Pharmaceuticals.

The company, a maker of drugs for hospital use, formulated core values early in its existence and worked from there, Schroeder said. The values, including performance, accountability, transparency, integrity and respect, were meant to attract talented employees who would work well together.

For those employees, Cadence provides a long list of benefits. They include stock options, individual and group bonus programs for all employees, along with a 401(k) savings plan and disability insurance.

Moreover, the company encourages various charitable activities, such as a toy drive for Rady Children’s Hospital, walks and runs to fund research for breast cancer, in addition to contributions to charities of each employee’s choice.

Many companies have such benefits on paper. The key is following through, Schroeder said. Because the company lives up to its standards, employees meet theirs, he said. The result is a cohesive team that spends its energies advancing the company’s goals, instead of dissipating them in disputes and confusion.

“I had been with several organizations previously that worked on core values and culture, but they always did it when they were much further down the road,” he said. “And usually, it was in response to things not going so well, there’s a conflict, or we’re not communicating as crisply as we’d like to.”

Schroeder said Cadence decided to start the company on the right note.

“My thinking was, what if we could hard-wire in a set of core values from the creation of the company, and then use that as a standard by which we bring people into the organization.”

That harmony would create a more effective workforce, he said.

“My real objective was to create a competitive advantage,” Schroeder said. “If we could have a more-cohesive team, working together, if we weren’t spending a lot of time figuring out how to work with one another ... could you compete with larger companies? We certainly couldn’t outspend them. But I did believe we could outthink and outmaneuver them.”

Schroeder said part of the planning was to look ahead to the growth of the company. As employees are added, there’s a continual challenge in maintaining the corporate culture, and attracting people who appreciate that culture.

Cadence faced that challenge with the launch of its first product, Ofirmev, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2010. Ofirmev is an intravenous form of the painkiller acetaminophen. It is an alternative to opioid drugs that can cause addiction.

To sell Ofirmev, Cadence employs a field sales force based in several offices across the country. Of its approximately 245 employees, just 65 work in San Diego.

Hiring the field sales force marked a big transition for Cadence.

“Suddenly, as we prepared to market our first FDA-approved product, we went from a San Diego-centric organization to (having) two-thirds of the employees being remote from San Diego,” Schroeder said. “We tried to get in front of that by doing a lot of training and planning, even trying to get the home office folks with the sales team to talk about issues, concerns and needs.

“The big risk there was that we could ruin our culture and lose our way with our core values if we didn’t get this right,” Schroeder said. “When you’re hiring a lot of folks in a short amount of time, it takes a fair amount of discipline to make that happen.”

Cadence hired some people who didn’t fit the company, Schroeder said. But those mistakes were few compared with other companies in the same situation.

“We came out of it with a very healthy, intact culture that continues to thrive,” he said.